How to Disinfect Your House After an Illness

9. Open Your Windows

The World Health Organization recommends opening windows and allowing airflow to prevent infections.

When your windows are closed, the pathogens that cause specific infections swarm around in communities. Since they have no competition from other kinds of bacteria for nutrients and energy, they thrive.

Opening the windows allows the “good bacteria” to come in from outside and dilute the activity of these pathogens. This is why infections often recur in over-sterilized hospitals where the balancing bacteria, too, is killed off.

The quantity of bacteria associated with human pathogens is greater indoors, and greater in rooms with less airflow and less relative humidity, according to a 2012 study published in The ISME Journal.

Hence, opening the windows from time to time is encouraged.

10. Empty Your Garbage Cans

Your garbage cans are likely to be teeming with germs and bacteria due to all the tissues tossed in there during an illness.

Furthermore, the food and other waste that sits in garbage cans is full of filthy bacteria, contaminating the air in your home.

Garbage cans that are not emptied regularly, and especially right after an illness, can cause a recurrence of infection and disease.

It is also important to scrub your garbage cans thoroughly after an illness to make sure no bacteria remain. You can use gloves, a long-handled scrubbing brush and a disinfectant spray to scrub the can from the inside out.